'Party of No' strategy backfires

Democrats' midterm chances get a boost from health-care reform

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The party put everything on the line, pulled out all the stops, played for the jackpot -- and lost.

President Obama might say the House vote in favor of health-care reform was not the victory of any party, but it was certainly a defeat for the Republicans, who all voted 'No.'

The Republican Party lined up on the wrong side of history on health-care reform and will pay the price in midterm elections. Democrats will lose seats - the president's party usually does in midterms - but not nearly as many as they would have without the passage of healthcare reform.

The Republicans upped the ante throughout the debate, creating the drama, delaying the vote until late Sunday night, even going so far as to whip a crowd of protesters into a frenzy outside the Capitol during the final vote - and all of this served to make their defeat that much bigger.

The excessive rhetoric of House Minority Leader John Boehner, who called the bill "Armageddon," will leave Republicans looking silly as the law's various provisions are quietly implemented, and affordable health care becomes as natural to people as Social Security and Medicare have become.

The midterm elections will not be a referendum on health-care reform. That was the election in 2008, when the majority voted in favor of reform and finally got what it sought through our tortured legislative process.

But midterm elections will be a referendum on Obama's performance, and the outcome depends on how skillfully the administration and the congressional majority now use the game-changing momentum of the health-care vote over the weekend.

Having discovered a backbone thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's forceful prodding, will Obama now stand up for other key items on his agenda, such as bank regulatory reform and job stimulus? The election in November is much likelier to turn on these issues.

Many commentators have focused on a handful of Democratic lawmakers in "Republican" districts who now face "political extinction" for having voted in favor of a perennial feature of the Democratic platform.

That is truly missing the forest for the trees. Democrats In Name Only are no use to the party or the congressional majority. If the voters in these districts truly want Republican policy, they should vote for a Republican. But the clear will of the national electorate, which voted for large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and a president who made health-care reform his top priority, cannot be held hostage to the fate of a few congressmen.

Democrats can't stop now

The main problem the Democrats faced going into this election was that they seemed to get so little done despite the big majorities from 2008. The passage of health-care reform hugely changes that perception. If Democrats can maintain that momentum and get more legislation enacted by November, they will keep losses to a minimum this year and set the stage for Obama's reelection in 2012.

The Republicans can help some more if they have a mind to. They could follow the hoary advice of former House speaker Newt Gingrich and campaign for repeal of the health-care reform that just passed. That would certainly help Democrats.

Or GOP candidates could promise more of the same obstructionism under the tried and true leadership of Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Now that their tactics of bullying, bluffing and misinformation have been exposed for what they are, standing behind them can only further help the Democratic cause.

Or they could consign these able leaders and their failed strategies to the past, where they belong, and re-group under new leadership with, who knows, some constructive ideas that conform to Republican principles.

As for the Democrats, it remains to be seen if they can truly exploit the advantage they have gained. After all, it is still the White House and congressional leadership that somehow managed to turn a clear electoral mandate into 14 months of agonizing and debilitating strife.

Will Pelosi, who by all accounts provided the initial drive to resurrect health-care reform after Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts' Senate election seemed to kill it, now be setting the agenda? Or, having discovered that, hey, this change thing actually can work, will Obama start showing the courage of his convictions, or at least some conviction?

Maybe she/he will perform another miracle, and raise the Consumer Financial Protection Agency from the dead, even in the halfway-house version of the Senate bill, where it becomes an autonomous department within the Federal Reserve rather than an independent agency.

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